The 1994 annual U.N.
Population Fund report projects that by 2050 the world population will have grown from 1994's 5.7 billion to stabilize at 10 billion (if population growth rates continue to decline as expected), 7.8 billion (if rates decline even just a little faster than expected) or 12.5 billion (if today's rates stop falling).
Some labor-strapped countries like France still give economic incentives for families to have more children.
Some belief systems significantly influence global population rate increases, especially in traditional Catholic and Islamic countries, which favor large families and discourage women's reproductive rights.
Conversely, in 1977 labor-strapped Singapore, births declined 12% during the astrologically inauspicious "year of the snake".
Yet, the serious economic disadvantages to nations and individuals of over-population have driven Islamic Iran, Egypt, Albania, Tunisia (which abolished polygamy), and largely Catholic Spain, Italy, Mexico, Brazil and other Latin American countries to remove government subsidies encouraging large families, start family planning (particularly contraception); women's health and education; and women's emancipation and employment efforts, to reduce fertility rates, as have the U.K., Germany, India, China, Mauritius, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
Elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa growth rates remain high, while AIDS cuts growth only 1%.
China, with one abortion for every two live births, imposed severe penalties for urban families wanting more than one child and aggressively promoted sterilization (as did Brazil).
Prosperity and education raise off-spring survival rates, which naturally lower fertility rates, such as when families migrate from poor rural areas to more prosperous cities.
